The politics of Lebanon: The state that didn’t fail — yet

A UN peacekeeper from India looks through his binoculars during an investigation by UN peacekeepers and Lebanese army soldiers near the site where Hezbollah attacked on Tuesday an Israeli patrol, near the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms, southern Lebanon, on Wednesday. Israel fired toward Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon on Tuesday after the Shiite guerrillas set off an explosion along the tense border that wounded at least two Israeli soldiers, in the most serious incident between the two countries in months. (AP)

BEIRUT — As one of the Arab world’s earliest collapsed states, Lebanon has a lot going for it. The country may have been ruined by 15 years of civil war, but it is far wealthier than its big neighbour, Syria; it enjoys a degree of political liberty; and, by the region’s standards, its society is tolerant.

Under a power-sharing deal that ended the war in 1990, the central government is weak — when, that is, it has one. Parliamentary elections have been delayed since 2013 for lack of an election law; and politicians have been squabbling over a new president since April. But the country’s wily businesses have found ways of working around these and other obstacles such as corruption or electricity blackouts. Where the state fails to provide services entrepreneurs fill the gap: Although only 30 per cent of children attend state-run schools, the Lebanese are highly educated.

Christians, Sunni and Shiite, who each make up roughly a third of the 4.4 million population, have found a way of rubbing along despite their divisions at home and the turbulence around them. The Lebanese would be rich indeed if they had a pound every time their country had been described as “on the brink” of violent collapse. It has survived wars with Israel and meddling by Syria.

Lebanon is, like other Arab states, a sectarian patchwork. Its Sunnis share the fury of their Syrian co-religionists against the regime of President Bashar Assad; and its Shiites share the fears of the minorities that support Syria’s government. Yet Lebanon did not fall into the abyss when Hezbollah, the Shiite party-cum-militia, entered the war to prop up Assad. It survived when Syria’s mainly Sunni rebels used northern Lebanon as a transit route for their arms. It has kept going despite the influx of more than 1 million Syrian refugees, now a fifth of the total population.

Yet the picture is far from rosy. Lebanon has taken years to get around to exploiting its offshore gas; Israel is already exporting gas from the same area. Wars with Israel, including some started by Hezbollah, seem to break out every few years. The newest destabilizing factor is the jihadists who call themselves Islamic State. They have grown increasingly assertive on the Syrian-Lebanese border. In August militants from the Islamic State group and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, snatched two dozen Lebanese soldiers from Arsal, a border town. Their families have since set up roadblocks to protest against the government’s inability to rescue them; the Islamic State group has beheaded at least two of the captives.

On Oct. 4 to Oct. 6, Hezbollah clashed on the border with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was fighting to carve out a supply route. Syrian refugees suffer a growing and ugly backlash from their resentful hosts. Some 45 municipalities have imposed curfews on refugees, reckons Human Rights Watch, a lobby.

Particularly in the impoverished, Sunni-dominated north, anger simmers now that the Lebanese army, traditionally a neutral institution, is seen to be fighting the same Sunni enemies as Hezbollah. There is “a highly toxic cocktail” in northern Lebanon, says Raphaël Lefèvre of Carnegie Center, a think tank.

Until recently, most Sunnis in Tripoli, the main city in the north, supported the army and, next door, cheered on Syria’s moderate fighters and Jabhat al-Nusra. But among the poor and devout, some men now express admiration for the Islamic State group’s victories against the Syrian regime and the Shiites in Iraq. The talk is of Sunnis taking on the Shiites within Lebanon. The unspoken pact underpinning the country’s mostly genteel anarchy - that the sects would refrain from behavior that might bring back the civil war - could yet be tested.